WHAT IS FERMENTATION?
BIO-TRANSFORMED ® Nutrients
Harvesting Fuel Molecules From Food
BIO-FOODS ®, THE BIO TRANSFORMATION COMPANY ®
Most people know that fermentation involves a micro-organism, often a beneficial yeast like saccharomyces cerevisiae, and that the micro-organism is somehow "transforming" the food being fermented. But what is the micro-organism actually doing?
Harvesting Fuel Molecules From Food
Living cells have evolved a means to derive, store, and use chemical energy from fuel molecules found in food. Energy released by the breakdown of fuel molecules is captured and held within the cell in the high-energy phosphate bonds of
ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP serves as the major energy "currency" in
all living things. That energy "currency" can be "spent" (released) by the cell at any time to perform its work (contracting muscles for example).
It's a little like our deriving energy from the breakdown of atoms, delivered to us as electricity and stored in the "currency" of batteries which we carry around until we need to "spend" it (to operate a cellular phone for example).
The major fuel molecule found in food is glucose. The first step in the cell's energy-capturing process, called glycolysis or fermentation, is the breaking down of glucose with the aid of specific cell enzymes.
The enzymes breaking down glucose, and many other cell enzymes, manipulate and transfer electrons and protons in ways which convert and form certain substances. ATP formation is one example, formation of pyruvic acid is another. Yeast cells also have enzymes that transform pyruvic acid into ethanol, a third of many examples. The conversion and formation of substances by enzymes of cells constitutes the action of fermentation (the original name for enzymes was in fact "ferments").
Fermentation therefore, is essentially a process during which living cells harvest fuel molecules from food in order to generate ATP for their own energy needs. During that process metabolic and bio-chemical alteration of the physico-chemical makeup of the fermented food occurs.
For the fermentor cell a major aim is energy production for itself, but luckily a number of other metabolic and bio-chemical changes take place that can improve the nutritional profile of the food being fermented. Examples:
Milk is transformed into yogurt.
Healthy plants develop in organically enriched soils which nourish the micro-organisms that transform inorganic minerals from rocks and sand into more utilizable forms for plants.
Soybeans are transformed into the more digestible (and tastier) Miso, Tempeh, and Natto. During fermentation Genistin, Daidzin and Glycitin are converted to their utilizable forms Genistein, Daidzein and Glycitein.
BIO-FOODS ®, THE BIO TRANSFORMATION COMPANY ®
Bio-Foods' owners have over twenty years of experience and knowledge in the technology and benefits of transforming foods utilizing Nature itself in the form of active beneficial yeast fermentation.
Bio-Foods ® Bio-Transformed ® Vitamin and Mineral Yeasts are produced by enriching food media with a particular vitamin or mineral prior to a lengthy active fermentation phase. Simple USP vitamin and mineral isolates are transformed into highly complex foods in which the nutrient (as in all natural foods) is in complex formation with other constituents of the food. That is the way Nature intended us to consume nutrients, not as separate bits of purified chemical crystals and powders. There is a synergy, wholesomeness, and completeness to food. Every year brings more evidence for the interlocking relationships between nutrients and phytonutrients in foods.
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January 1999, Bio-Foods, Ltd., All Rights Reserved